


Milkshakes and Moaning

by josephina_x



Series: Cotton Candy Bingo 2012 [9]
Category: Smallville
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-24
Updated: 2013-07-24
Packaged: 2017-12-21 04:34:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/895851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Window (random time after the beginning of s4)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Milkshakes and Moaning

"It's not fair," Lex grumbled under his breath, head pillowed in his arms on the table as he glared at the drink glass sitting in front of him.

Chloe and Lana exchanged a glance as the walked past. They'd never seen Lex _slouch_ before.

They made a U-turn and sat down across from him in the Talon booth.

He sighed and straightened up somewhat, but was still slouching a bit at the shoulders as he played with his straw, frowning down into his strawberry milkshake, which had to be at _least_ half whipped cream from the look of it.

"You okay?" Lane asked, breaching the silence.

"No," said Lex. "Stupid Pete," he muttered, scowling.

"Seriously? You're still on that?" Chloe said, stifling a laugh at the glare she got.

Lana elbowed her discreetly. _Hard._ "What'd he do?" she asked Lex.

"Motorbiking with Clark again." He swiped at the whipped cream with the straw. "Never should've said anything."

"Said what?" Lana asked, and by the time Lex was done explaining about how his confrontation with Pete had 'backfired'...

"--Wait, wait, wait," Chloe said, waving her hands out in front of her. "Hold on. You went to him _wanting_ him to come to the sleepover and talk with Clark more, when he wasn't going to before you said anything... and then he did. Isn't that a _good_ thing?"

"I changed my mind," he informed them both loftily and darkly, glaring at his drink as he slammed the straw into the milkshake like a spear-thrust through a...

Lana and Chloe exchanged another look.

"Y'know, I've noticed that our conversations have kind of changed a lot since you came out with Clark," Chloe put out there, kind of amused. Lana just sighed softly as Chloe propped her head up on her fist, settling in.

"I've always been bisexual," Lex told them. "And I think that has more to do with neither of you expecting me to think on you in any sexual manner whatsoever."

Chloe and Lana both blinked at him.

"It makes life much easier," he continued, staring into his milkshake and stirring it.

"Um, run that by us again?" Chloe said, after a quick round of 'you ask!' 'no, you!' eye-flicks between her and her ex-cheerleader compatriot in Luthor-cheering-up. ...Because they were good friends, and Clark would want them to.

"You don't expect me to find you sexually attractive, so I don't have to flirt with you," Lex explained in mild tones, looking up at them.

"...You're completely serious," Chloe said slowly, trying to wrap her mind around that one.

"You flirt with people just because you think they expect it?" Lana asked him, taken aback.

"Of course."

"Why would you do that?" Lana asked him, frowning in confusion and total noncomprehension.

Lex blinked at her and got a slight frown, as though she'd asked him to remind her why the sun rose in the east.

"Because if I didn't, they'd either get angry at me for not seeming to find them attractive enough to hit on, or they'd start second-guessing their own appearance and feel horrible about it, wondering what was wrong with themselves that I didn't seem to notice them the way they expected and wanted me to." He dipped his straw into his milkshake. "It's only polite," he told them, before he stuck the huge glob of whipped cream he'd scooped up with it into his mouth and swallowed it down.

Chloe stared at him, then let her head drop facedown onto the table into her arms. Her shoulders started to shake.

Lana's face scrunched up. "But-- that-- you..." After some more minor spluttering, she composed herself enough to ask, strained, "So, uh, that time when I was at the mansion and you were, uh, teaching that girl the... breaststroke...?"

"Hm?" he said as he removed the straw from his mouth. "Oh. That." He seemed to shrug it off. "Actually, it was somewhat the other way around."

Lana's expression went a little blank as she remembered that the girl he'd been with had been older than **both** of them had been at the time.

"...How did you end up in the pool doing...?" she said weakly, not sure what else she _could_ ask.

"She wanted to. Why not?"

Chloe's shoulders started to shake a little harder, and she started making quiet choked squeaky noises. Lana scowled down at her, lips thinning.

She adopted a patient expression when she looked back up at Lex. "Well, I'm glad that you don't feel obligated to flirt at us anymore," she told him seriously.

"Me, too," Lex agreed. "It makes life much easier when I don't have to worry about treating you like bodies, just people."

Chloe went still.

Lana smiled back at Lex in silent encouragement as Chloe slowly poked her head up to stare at him with slightly horrified eyes.

"Thank you, Lex," Lana told him. "I appreciate being able to have serious conversations with you, too. ...But I think what Chloe _may_ have meant earlier was that lately you've been seeming to act more..." Lana searched for a word.

"...like you're _our_ age?" Chloe put out there, recovering quickly.

Lex frowned at his milkshake. "My teenage years were _horrible_. If anyone deserves a do-over, it's me."

Chloe looked at him in incredulous disbelief as he downed another bite of whipped cream. "Uh. Luthor. The whole thing about being a teenager is that you get through it, and then it's over. Being a teenager _universally_ sucks. Nobody in their right mind wants a 'do-over'!"

Lex eyed her. Then he turned to Lana. "Do you think your life currently sucks?" he asked her, perfectly seriously.

"Wh-- _What?_ " Lana said, surprised. "Um..."

Lex raised his eyebrows at Chloe in a not-quite-smug knowingness.

"Hey, that doesn't count -- she's a cheerleader!" Chloe said defensively.

"What?" Lana said. "--What does _that_ have to do with anything?"

"--It's different when you're popular," Chloe told her consolingly, then started after the words tumbled out of her mouth and she realized exactly what she'd said.

She slowly turned back to Luthor, eyes wide.

She opened her mouth--

\--and Lana _literally_ slapped a hand over it to keep her from talking.

"How many milkshakes had you had so far?" Lana asked Lex.

"Three," he informed them, scooping up another bite of whipped cream.

"Wha--? Seriously?" Chloe said, wrestling Lana's hand down away from her face. "This is your third milkshake?"

Lex frowned at her.

" **No** ," he said. "I've _had_ three. I'm _working on_ my fourth," he explained as if she was slow, gesturing at the fourth milkshake with his straw.

" _Wow_ ," said Chloe, sitting back in the booth and staring at him like she was really seeing him for the first time. "Soooo... when you eat too much sugar, you act like an emo teenager." She considered this for a moment, then nodded seriously, stifling a grin. "Good to know."

Lana elbowed her again, even harder.

"I think maybe this should be your last one," Lana told him.

Lex eyed her. "You can't cut me off," he said. "I own the whole place now. --I can have as many as I want," he added, with a slightly manic gleam in his eye.

"Um," said Lana.

"--Wait a minute," Chloe said suddenly, leaning forward. "You're eating whipped cream!"

Lex gave her a 'yes, so?' look.

"It's, just... --you're _eating whipped cream!!_ " she repeated, stunned.

Lex frowned at her. "It's all **her** fault, you know," he said conversationally, pointing at Lana with the straw accusingly before digging into the mass of whipped cream again. "She's the one who gave me that whipped-cream-topped whatever-it-was that one time."

They both stared at him.

"It's good. I got a little addicted," he said. "It's _her_ fault."

"ohmygod," Lana said quietly, facepalming. "I didn't know..." Whether what she hadn't known was whether she'd messed up the drink, or that Lex had never had whipped cream before, was somewhat unclear.

"But-- _you're eating whipped cream!_ " Chloe repeated, still stuck on the concept, now that she'd noticed it.

"... _ **Martha**_ said there's nothing wrong with acting like myself sometimes ... _or_ liking whipped cream." Lex said this slowly, with narrowed eyes, and the two girls got the feeling that _there had been an actual conversation involved there, holy crap_.

"Lex!" they all heard, and Lex didn't perk up the way he normally did when he saw Clark.

Instead, his eyes slid sideways to meet Pete's.

"Luthor," Pete said cooly, without letting it blow his good mood.

"Ross," Lex said neutrally.

"Um, you want anything to drink, Pete?" Clark asked his friend.

"Nah, I'm fine," Pete said, glancing around the Talon, before his eyes seemed to catch on someone. "Oh, hey--" he made a head jerk towards a group farther down. "Mind if I--?"

Clark just nodded, then shook his head and smiled.

Pete moved off, and Clark pulled up a chair to the edge of the booth.

"...So, which milkshake is this?" he asked, turning the chair around and sitting down in it backwards.

"Fourth."

"Were they _all_ strawberry?" Clark asked Lex, settling his arms over the back of the chair, and setting his head down on top of them.

"...Yes."

Chloe and Lana exchanged another look.

"I thought you were cutting back on the drinking?" Clark asked him.

"I _am_ ," Lex said petulantly.

Clark sighed. "I didn't mean the _alcohol_ , Lex," he said, rolling his eyes.

"Milkshakes _are_ superior," Lex said, as though in agreement.

"Nooo," said Clark, "you just get a different kind of wasted." He sighed. "Seriously, what is it with you and milkshakes?" he said, standing.

"They comes in every single flavor anybody can think of," Lex said. "They aren't an acquired taste. They're easy to make, and really cheap. You don't have to wait years to drink them. They don't make you sick unless the ingredients are bad, and if you drink them too fast, you just get ice-cream headaches, and those go away really quickly. No hangovers," Lex listed off.

"Right. Time to go," Clark said authoritatively, tugging him by the arm to get him to his feet. "Y'know, you could've told me that you wanted to come dirt biking with us," he told Lex as he gathered up his coat.

"I didn't want to go," Lex said. "Dirtbiking is... dirty. And loud. And messy. You can't talk over the noise. I wouldn't be able to hear you."

Clark got sort of a quirky smile. "Well, maybe horseback riding then?"

Lex looked up at Clark, then got a small smile and nodded once, almost shyly.

" _After_ you're off your sugar high," Clark said, rounding him up, and Lex sighed sadly at this pronouncement. He dealt out the payment for his milkshakes from his wallet onto the table as Clark left him for a moment to say 'bye to Pete.

Chloe and Lana stared at this spectacle and watched Clark go.

"Wow," said Chloe.

"...Lex," Lana said carefully, "are you jealous of Pete?"

Lex turned and glared down at her.

"Don't be ridiculous," he said. "Pete's just... He's a... jerk," he obviously self-censored, left eye twitching. "He's a **jerk** , and so not good enough for Clark."

The girls stared at him.

"...Pete's straight," Lana told him slowly. "You know that, right?"

"Of course I know that," Lex told her, frowning. "He's not good enough to be his friend, and he's _definitely_ not gay enough _or_ **good** enough to be his anything-else _more_ than that," he said firmly, as though a dire threat lay just upon the horizon of that pronouncement.

And with that said, he turned on his heel and stomped over to the door. Clark met him there and they left together.

"...Chloe," Lana said, leaning back in her seat and crossing her arms, considering the two step-brothers through the windows as they made their way down the sidewalk to Lex's car. "I think Lex is jealous of Pete."

Chloe looked at Lana.

Lana looked at Chloe.

"Yeesh," said Chloe. "Guess we'd better start hiding the dairy goods."


End file.
